by JL Merrow
“No one can see in your living room from outside, right?” Patrick breathed into his neck. “Unless they’ve climbed the fence and they’re standing in your garden, in which case they deserve to get an eyeful, the pervs.”
“No, but—”
“Thought we could make a few memories on that sofa of yours. Something to tide us over, nights when we don’t get the chance to be alone.”
“Oh God, yes.” Mark barely heard the paper lunch bags hit the hall floor, too intent on dragging Patrick by the hand into the living room. Patrick kicked his shoes off as they went, leaving them who knew where, and by the time they’d reached the sofa, he was tugging his shirt over his head.
God, he was gorgeous. Lightly tanned skin, a hairless chest—did he wax?—and pale nipples that tightened as Mark looked at them, and tightened even more when he pinched and played with them.
“Been thinking about getting a piercing,” Patrick said. “What do you reckon?”
Was it possible to improve upon perfection? Apparently Mark’s cock thought so, twitching at Patrick’s words. “Definitely worth thinking about,” he breathed.
Mark stripped off his own shirt, feeling self-conscious and very, very hairy. Patrick didn’t seem to mind, though. He ran his fingers through Mark’s chest hair with a murmur of “Nice,” then bent to kiss Mark’s neck again. “What do you wanna do?”
God, what didn’t he want to do? “I want to suck you,” Mark blurted out, shocking himself with his bluntness.
“I’m good with that,” Patrick said with a smile and undid his trousers. “Sit on the sofa, yeah?”
Mark did so.
Patrick pushed off his boxer briefs and climbed on the sofa to kneel astride Mark’s lap. Suddenly, deliriously, Mark was faced with conclusive proof that yes, Patrick did wax.
Mark had never been this close to another man’s hard cock before. Close up, it looked enormous, aggressively red, jutting proudly from between lean, strong legs. It looked delicious. The scent was driving him wild, so musky and male, with a hint of salt from the moisture glistening on the tip. Light-headed with desire, Mark slithered down on the sofa between Patrick’s legs until the angle was just right, then gripped the base with one hand and reached out with his tongue for a taste.
He wasn’t prepared for the jolt that ran through him, from his tongue through his chest and straight to his balls, as if Patrick had somehow plugged himself into the mains without Mark noticing. This was it. This was what he’d been missing all those years.
Heady as it was, it wasn’t enough. Mark plunged his mouth over the head of Patrick’s cock, revelling in the feeling of it filling his mouth, almost choking him. Patrick’s gasp only fed his desire, and he sucked gently, then ran his tongue around the head. His hand slipped lower to fondle Patrick’s balls, the hairlessness strange yet undeniably erotic.
“Fucking… Are you sure you haven’t done this before?” Patrick panted.
Mark scrabbled at the fastenings of his trousers, finally managing to get them open wide enough to get his hand inside. He gripped himself firmly and started to stroke. He wanted to come with Patrick’s dick in his mouth. He’d seen it in online porn, a man jerking himself off as he sucked his partner, and God, he wanted that. Wanted Patrick in his mouth as he came.
It wouldn’t take much, he knew it.
Patrick was babbling, muttering yeah, fuck, God—then he stopped.
A strange, jangly little tune had started playing.
It was a moment before Mark realised Patrick’s phone was ringing. “’S okay,” Patrick gasped. “They can leave a message.”
Thank God for that. Mark started sucking again, the saltiness in his mouth intensifying, Patrick’s dick hard as velvet-enclosed iron. This was heaven, this was it, this was—
There was a pounding on the front door. It sounded urgent, with a strong suggestion of I’m not stopping till you answer.
Damn, damn, damn.
Patrick hung his head and half laughed, half sighed. “Christ, does somebody up there hate us?”
Mark let Patrick’s dick slip from his mouth. Patrick groaned, and not in a good way this time, swung his leg back over Mark and stood up.
Damn it all to hell. Mark pushed himself up off the sofa, zipped up his trousers and pulled on his shirt, not bothering to button it back up. Whoever was at the door could just deal with it—with a bit of luck, it’d turn out to be a delivery for next door or something, and they could get back to what they were doing. He hurriedly checked to make sure nothing was poking out where it shouldn’t and there were no betraying stains, then ran to open the door.
“’Ullo, Mr. Nugent.” It was Lex, wringing their hands and at least having the grace to look as embarrassed as Mark felt. “I’m really, really sorry, yeah, but I need Patrick. Urgent. It’s the bloke from the council, and there’s been a cock-up about the run, and he’s gotta sort it out, like, right now. I wouldn’t of interrupted otherwise.”
“No, no, not a problem at all. Won’t you come in?” Mark babbled, taking refuge in extreme politeness from the cringe-inducing mortification of his daughter’s friend knowing exactly what he’d just been doing, and with whom.
“Nah, ta, I gotta get back, but you’ll send him right over, won’t you? I told ’em he’d only be ten minutes, see, and there’s five gone already.”
Mark nodded sadly. “He’ll be right over.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The week leading up to the fun run started out well enough for Patrick, but went downhill rapidly. He had about a ton and a half of stuff still to do before Sunday, so of course the trustees of SHARE had decided Friday would be the perfect day for a meeting. He knew from experience it’d take up the whole afternoon, and by the end of it, they’d have got bugger all done. And it meant bringing forward the deadline for sorting out any last-minute problems with anyone who worked office hours, like the insurance company and the council—although he hoped to God everything was now sorted with the last lot at least.
His time spent with Mark was the one bright spot. They’d had a lazy Sunday together the previous day, taking Fen out to lunch at the Sticky Wicket. Mark had wanted to invite Patrick’s mum along too, but Patrick had vetoed that one. He knew his mum, and while she was coming round to the idea of them being together, he wanted to give her a bit more time before he let her loose on Mark in public. Although, to be honest, he thought he might have spoken too soon once they were sat down at the table, Fen so bloody obviously on her best behaviour it made him want to hug her. Mum was a sucker for that kind of thing. Yeah, Fen’d bring her round if nothing else did.
Afterwards, they’d gone for a walk on the common, then sprawled around on the sofa at Mark’s watching DVDs, all three of them. It’d been a good day, even if Patrick was getting seriously frustrated by the lack of alone time with his bloke. God knew he wouldn’t have time to just pop round during the day this week. They’d both just have to settle for a bit of alone time by themselves.
Phone sex had been a nonstarter, Mark too bloody paranoid Fen would overhear. And, in any case, Patrick wanted to be there the first time he made Mark come.
They managed a couple of evenings together, but Patrick wasn’t really on his game. He was just too bloody knackered. The last time he made it there, in fact, Fen had videoed him snoring on the sofa with her phone and sent a copy to Lex.
Of course, sod’s law, he drove himself so hard during the week to get everything done by lunchtime Friday, he found himself with hardly anything to do for most of the morning—nothing that needed doing today, that was, and he was damned if he was starting anything new before the fun run was done and dusted—except look forward to the meeting with the trustees.
That was a passion killer if ever he’d known one.
“Right, wish me luck,” he said in resignation, standing up after lunch to go to the meeting. It was going to be h
eld at the Tickled Trout, as usual—catch the trustees squeezing themselves into SHARE’s little office by the river. He rolled his shoulders to try to get rid of the stiffness that’d come from nowhere over the morning.
Lex grinned. “You know what? I changed my mind. If your bloke decides he’s gonna keep you and you don’t have to work no more, I don’t want your job. I’ve seen the way them trustees look at me. Like they reckon I’m gonna run off with the collecting boxes.”
“Nah, they’re not all bad,” Patrick said, trying to sound like he believed it. He knew they meant well. All right, most of the time he did. Most of ’em. Maybe not Onslow, who was a git if ever he’d met one. But the rest of ’em were human. More or less. “They just don’t know what it’s like doing the actual work.”
Patrick ducked under the low lintel of the Tickled Trout’s door and went into the main bar to find the trustees already sitting around their usual large, round table in the corner. Onslow looked at his watch as Patrick approached, despite the fact Patrick knew damn well he was five minutes early.
There were six trustees of SHARE, but only five ever made it to a meeting. Old Miss Wellbeck, who’d been one of the founders, was excused on grounds of age and general decrepitude, although Patrick had seen her around the village a lot lately, leaning on the arm of a dapper older bloke, and she’d seemed to have plenty of spring in her step these days. The ones who always turned up were the vicar, Mrs. Ormley the school receptionist, Roger Hunstanton, who Patrick knew from the Sham-Drams and who was a total dick, and Trevor Williams, who had ambitions to be a dick but would never, ever make it because even a dick had to be able to stand up for himself now and then. And Onslow, who thought UKIP was a decent enough political party but they didn’t go far enough in their policies.
Patrick had often wondered what the lot of them, the vicar and Miss Wellbeck excepted, were doing as trustees of a charity, seeing as when it came to the milk of human kindness they were all pretty much lactose intolerant. Still, fair dues, they gave their time for nothing, and a charity as unfashionable as SHARE probably had to take what it could get.
The vicar always chaired the meeting, due to some long-standing tradition which totally ignored the fact he was the person least suited for the job. Mrs. Ormley always took minutes due, Patrick privately thought, to being female. How come she never seemed to mind was beyond him.
Despite the fact they’d all been handed a paper copy of the agenda on arrival, Mrs. Ormley insisted on reading it out with irritating slowness. When she finally got to item nine, the last on the list, Onslow coughed. “I have an item for Any Other Business. I wish to discuss staffing.”
Patrick frowned, but before he could say anything, the vicar spoke up, which was a first. “Really? I’m sure I speak for all of us here—not that I’d presume to speak for everyone else, of course—”
Onslow coughed again, louder this time. “Mrs. Ormley, if you would be so good as to note it on the agenda?”
“Of course, Kenneth,” she said with what was disturbingly close to a simper.
Patrick wondered what the hell Onslow was up to. He couldn’t believe the bloke wanted to increase staff, but he’d actually been grudgingly supportive of getting an admin assistant in six months ago, which had led to Patrick hiring Lex. Why would he change his tune now?
The memory of what Lex had said sent an uneasy shiver down his spine. I’ve seen the way they look at me.
Shit. He didn’t like who Patrick had hired, did he?
The journey down points one through eight on the agenda went with the usual frustrating stop-start approach, dithering from the vicar, and obstructiveness from Onslow and Hunstanton. It was all routine stuff, with the same old arguments they had every two months at these bloody meetings, half of which didn’t even concern Patrick ’cos it had to do with spending funds, not raising ’em. His eyes had seriously glazed over by the time it got to item number nine.
Onslow coughed. Patrick was seriously tempted to offer to nip over the chemist’s shop and get him some lozenges, ’cept if he did that, he’d be even more tempted to just not come back. “It’s come to my attention that we may have been a little hasty in employing an administration assistant. I’m really not sure our funds allow it.”
“Oi, now wait a minute,” Patrick said. “We went through all this six months ago, and you know the numbers make sense. More staff means more funds raised.”
“Ah, but…” Onslow looked around the table at each of them in turn. “Does it? It’s come to my attention that the…person currently holding the role is not working as many hours as we might wish. I’m sure you’re all aware that in the current climate, with budgets for government services being squeezed ever tighter, we need to make sure every penny of our own funds is spent as wisely as possible.”
“Lex has medical appointments,” Patrick said shortly. “They made it clear when they interviewed, all right?”
“Yes, but it’s not exactly a health issue, is it? Now, I have every sympathy with the individual concerned—”
Yeah, right, Patrick thought sourly.
“—but SHARE does not exist to help individuals with that sort of problem. Is it fair to the people we were set up to help to continue in a course of action that is to their detriment? I’m sure we’re all aware the Home Farm Market Gardening project, to name but one, now relies solely on charity funding, and there’s a chronic shortfall of Supported Housing places throughout the district.”
There was a general chorus of muttered approval from the trustees. Even from the bloody vicar. Didn’t he see this was blatant bigotry, just dressed up as concern for the charity ’cos even Onslow knew that sort of thing didn’t fly anymore? And yeah, so maybe everything he said about the state-funded programmes being cut back and all was true, but that didn’t make it Lex’s fault.
Patrick leaned forward to make his point. “Lex works hard. Just ’cos they sometimes have to have time off doesn’t mean they don’t make it up later. I dunno what I’d have done without Lex, sorting out this fun run.” For which none of them had bothered to sign up, he’d noticed.
“Well, well,” put in the vicar, looking at his watch. “Perhaps we could address the matter after the run? I could be free this time next week, if that’s acceptable with all of you?”
Great. Patrick could see how it’d go. Next week, they’d ask him if he had any big events coming up. He’d have to say no, because this was the big one until the autumn, when they had a ball planned. And then they’d say, Right, so you don’t need an assistant, do you? And that’d be it, and there’d be one more person signing on for the dole.
Christ, how was he gonna tell Lex?
And why the bloody hell did all this have to happen now?
Chapter Twenty-Four
Mark was surprised—and pleased, if embarrassed—to be greeted with a rousing cheer when he turned up to the Spartans meeting on Friday night. As the fun run was on the coming Sunday, their fortnightly meeting had been pulled forward. Much to the annoyance, apparently, of the local poetry society, who were used to having the upstairs room at the Three Lions to themselves Friday nights.
“Best induction effort ever, that was,” Barry said, and there was a chorus of nods. “You’ve raised the bar there, mate, and no mistake. We were raking it in with the charity buckets, and we had half a dozen people asking about membership. Most of ’em not eligible on account of being female, unfortunately, but you can’t have everything.”
Si laughed, his big black beard shaking. “Oh yes, and most of ’em over fifty.”
“Not all of ’em,” Rory put in glumly. “My ex-missus was asking if you were single.”
Jolted out of his disbelieving high (they like me, they really like me), Mark swallowed and darted a glance over at Patrick, whose face gave away nothing of his wishes. “Sorry. No,” he managed. Rory looked a bit more cheerful.
Mark wasn’t
sure if he was relieved or disappointed when Patrick didn’t jump in with actually, he’s with me. They’d seen each other a couple more times this week, but Patrick hadn’t had a lot of time to spare, with the fun run coming up on Sunday.
At least, Mark hoped it was that, rather than him having changed his mind about Mark.
No, that was paranoia. The time they’d spent together, while definitely frustrating in one particular way, had otherwise been, well, nice—sitting side by side on the sofa watching television with Fen, sneaking kisses whenever she left the room and then laughing about it like schoolboys. Particularly when she gave them withering looks on her return and came out with things like “I do know what you’re doing. I’m not a kid.” It’d been fun. Cosy.
Taking her out last Sunday had been wonderful too. Like having a family again, only this time, one that worked. If they’d bumped into anyone from the Spartans while they were out that day, Mark didn’t think he’d have been able to restrain himself from proudly announcing their couple-dom.
Patrick—Patrick had been marvellous. Great with Fen. Maybe there wasn’t the instant connection she’d had with David, but she seemed to like him well enough. Apparently, Lex’s endorsement was worth a good deal. Or maybe it was just that Patrick was, well, Patrick.
Possibly Mark was biased there, however.
Barry rapped on the table, startling Mark out of his reverie. “Right. Main, and pretty much only, item on the agenda: the SHARE Fun Run. Patrick, want to say a few words?”
Patrick stood up. He looked tired. “Cheers, Barry. Yeah, well, it’s all looking good. Rory, you’re still on to man the bouncy slide, right?”
Rory nodded. “Me kids’d never speak to me again if I backed out now. Course, I’m gutted I won’t be able to do the run,” he added, actually looking pretty smug about it.
“Yeah, right.” Patrick had his number. “Thanks to everyone who’s signed up as a marshal—we’ve got plenty of those now, so the rest of you are just gonna have to run it.”